The trauma of this event causes Gifty’s mother to have a breakdown, and she tries killing herself. Three years after first taking the painkillers and following a turbulent period where he goes missing for days at a time, Nana dies of a heroin overdose.

However, he relapses merely 14 hours after leaving. Following this unsuccessful bid to quit, and several more relapses, he goes into a rehab program. He soon moves onto to heroin and suffers terribly from withdrawal when he attempts to stop. Gifty and her mother discover that Nana has developed an addiction when they find drugs hidden in his room. In his last years at high school, he becomes a star player for his local basketball team, but he injures his ankle playing and is prescribed opioid-based painkillers. Gifty’s brother starts playing basketball, having previously excelled at, but abandoned, soccer. When Gifty is four years old, her father returns to Ghana for good on the pretext of seeing his brother. The stresses of poverty, racism, and homesickness for Ghana put a great strain on her parents’ relationship. They soon have Gifty, when her mother is 40. Having emigrated, they live in Alabama, where her mother gets a job as a care worker and her father a janitor. Gifty’s mother goes first, staying with a cousin, with her father to follow. They decide to emigrate to the United States to provide a better life for him. Despite thinking they were too old for a child, and years of trying, they are blessed with Gifty’s brother, Nana. Gifty’s parents meet in Kumasi, Ghana, and marry there. Gifty’s central childhood narrative is interspersed with details of events from the present and from Gifty’s time at college and graduate school.

The text does not always tell this story in a linear or chronological fashion. She attempts to understand what has brought them to this point, and if there is any hope of redemption from it. Her mother’s arrival and awful state lead Gifty to re-examine the story of her childhood and family life. When the pastor from her hometown in Alabama calls to say Gifty’s mother is depressed again, Gifty invites her mother to stay with her. Gifty is a final-year PhD candidate in neuroscience at Stanford University in California.

The transcendent kingdom